The present invention relates to a device for guiding a liquid passage forming member.
Inkjet printers are widely known as liquid ejection apparatuses for ejecting liquid onto a target. Such a printer has a recording head mounted on a reciprocating carriage. Ink (liquid) is supplied to the recording head from ink cartridges (liquid containers). The recording head has nozzles, through which ink is ejected onto a recording medium, or a target, thereby subjecting the recording medium printing. Such printers include, for example, a printer disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-262092, in which ink cartridges are mounted on a carriage (on-carriage type) and a printer disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-320680, in which ink cartridges are not mounted on a carriage but fixed to a fixing position of the printer (off-carriage type).
An ink cartridge of an on-carriage type printer has a small ink capacity due to a limited space on the carriage. Thus, when performing a large amount of printing, ink cartridges need to be frequently replaced. Therefore, when performing a large amount of printing, not only replacement of ink cartridges needs to be performed manually, but also, the running costs are increased. Accordingly, some on-carriage type printers have been modified such that an external high capacity ink tank is connected to the ink cartridges on the carriage. When such a modification is applied, ink supply tubes (liquid passage forming members) for supplying ink from the external ink tank to the ink cartridges are routed inside the printer while being curved at several locations.
However, in an on-carriage type printer, ink cartridges are primarily attached to the carriage, and there is no need to route ink supply tubes. Therefore, partly due to demands for size reduction of printers, hardly any space exists between a frame 11 of a printer 10 and a rear surface 16d of a carriage 16 as shown in FIG. 1B. Even if ink supply tubes extending from an external ink tank are routed along a front surface 16a of the carriage 16, the tubes need to be curved toward an upper surface of the ink cartridges. A sufficient space for permitting the tubes to be curved cannot be easily created. Particularly, a recent increase in the types of ink colors has resulted in an increased number of ink supply tubes in a printer. This increases the size of a space for permitting the ink supply tubes to be curved.